Ten wines to try in 2019
Looking for something slightly different to try in 2019? Margaret Rand, author of 101 Wines to Try Before You Die, recommends ten intriguing bottles to get you ahead of the curve...
Narrowing the wines of the world to just 101 for my book was an even tougher task than it would have been a decade ago. Every region is sprouting new, ambitious and innovative producers.
Apart from a few dinosaurs of the wine world, we’re seeing the end of over-oaking and overripeness, and producers in many areas are seeking ways of bringing down excessive sugar levels.
Scroll down to see Margaret’s ten wines to try in 2019
Should I pick new and barely tried names because their first releases had pleased me so much, or should I look for a track record? Should I focus on biodynamic growers, whose wines can be so wonderful even if the pseudo-science behind them can be so annoying? How many of the acknowledged icon wines of the world should I include?
This last was my biggest problem. Why leave out Latour and Lafite, Ausone and Petrus, when those wines – when I’ve had occasion to taste them – have knocked me sideways? Space, is the answer. To have included them would have meant leaving out the likes of Steve Pannell’s Grenache, Hatzidakis Assyrtiko or Wieninger’s Gemischter Satz.
And everybody knows about Latour and Lafite – you don’t need me to tell you they’re good.
Some regions I left out altogether. Some, given another 100 wines to play with, would have been more heavily represented.
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I haven’t tasted every wine in the world. My personal list of wines I still need to try is probably a lot longer than 101. In the meantime, these 10 wines below offer a snapshot of the selection in my book, while also providing some drinking inspiration for the year ahead.
Ten wines to try in 2019
SC Pannell, Grenache McLaren Vale, South Australia
Grape Grenache
Drink with Fish, vegetable dishes, partridge; almost anything, really
When to drink From 3-15 years plus
Decant? If you want
Chill? No
Why you should look out for it A light, fresh and aromatic delicacy
What to ask the winemaker ‘What did Pinot Noir teach you about Grenache?’
What not to say ‘I’ll bet you’d rather be making Burgundy’
One moment Steve Pannell is a Young Turk; the next he’s a Grand Old Man (not old at all – sorry, Steve). One moment Australian Grenache is trying to be Shiraz, with overripeness, masses of extraction; the next it’s the warm-climate answer to Pinot, with delicacy, lightness, freshness and a mission to reflect every terroir that comes its way.
That Aussie Grenache has blossomed into such a great delicacy is in large measure due to Pannell. His wines have always had a lightness of touch – before he set up his own winery, he was chief red winemaker at Hardy’s for 10 years, and before that he worked vintages around Europe (Aldo Vajra in Barolo; Domaines Dujac and Pousse d’Or in Burgundy).
Nebbiolo, Pinot and now Grenache – you can see the pattern.
Pannell works with old, dry-farmed vines, which he picks early for freshness. He keeps it simple with reductive winemaking and early bottling. The result is Grenache with Turkish-delight and raspberry flavours, floral and aromatic with violets, roses and dried herbs. The texture is silky, but with an enlivening edge of tannin. He says he doesn’t know why his wines turn out so well; this might not be the whole truth.
Even better news is that he’s one of many McLaren Vale winemakers doing great things with Grenache. Other names include Bekkers, D’Arenberg, Marmont, Ochota Barrels, Yangarra Estate. If you want transparency, lightness and freshness in Australian Grenache, look no further than McLaren Vale.
The wine from the 2017 vintage is to be named Old McDonald Grenache, after its vineyard source in Blewitt Springs.
P Parra y Familia, Pencopolitano Itata/Cauquenes, Chile
Grapes Malbec, Syrah, Carignan, Carmenère, Cinsault, País
Drink with My tasting sample was rather good with Parmesan
When to drink From release for 5 or 6 years
Decant? No
Chill? Keep it on the cool side
Why you should look out for it Great purity with lots of upfront flavour
What to ask the winemaker ‘Can you recognise soil types in wine, blind?’
What not to say ‘I can’t even tell red from white, blind’
This is the new Chile: vibrant, balanced and poised. The old Chile, being a little unsure of itself, strove for authority via over-oaking and over-extraction. The new Chile doesn’t need any of that. It’s not afraid to take risks, and it seeks acidity in the way that the old Chile sought softness. It’s so secure and confident, it feels as though it doesn’t have to try.
Enough poetry. The first thing (person, actually) to talk about is Pedro Parra. He’s a terroir consultant – not a job likely to feature in a school careers office – with clients from Sonoma to Burgundy, and he’s obsessed with finding the very best terroirs for wine. ‘A lot of my job is making people change their mind,’ he has said.
He’s joined forces with Louis-Michel Liger-Belair in a Chilean project called Aristos, but
P Parra y Familia is his own project. The grapes are sourced from a handful of different vineyards of ungrafted vines up to 100 years old, some of them field blends, right down in the cool south of the country.
Marginal climates are something Parra likes very much. What he also likes is the red granite soils here, which he says give a nervous tension to the wine and lots of upfront flavour on the palate. There is also some schist in these vineyards: schist, he says, brings a more horizontal structure and powerful tannins.
The winemaking uses indigenous yeasts, and there’s great purity to the wine, along with vivid black fruit, a stony, mineral character, floral, red-berried notes, medium body and immense moreishness. The tasting sample I have at my elbow while writing this has been followed by a second tasting sample. It’s an exhilarating wine.
Clai, Sveti Jakov Istria, Croatia
Grapes Malvasia Istriana
Drink with It seems to work with almost anything
When to drink Up to 10 or even 20 years
Decant? Yes, an hour or more before drinking
Chill? A little
Why you should look out for it The colour of aged fino Sherry with a light texture
What to ask the winemaker ‘How do you get such finesse?’
What not to say ‘Shouldn’t “orange” and “natural” mean “rustic”?’
If you follow the fertile Mirna River valley inland from the Istrian coast you will see, only an intensively farmed field or two back from the river, a much wilder landscape of forest, fields carved out wherever the land allows, and the Dinaric mountains rising to the north. The cold air coming off the mountain ridge combines with the gentler maritime influence coming in through the Mirna valley to give hot, dry summers but much cooler autumns and cold winters.
This is where Giorgio Clai has his winery and his 8ha of vines, tucked into a valley 10km from the sea and 30km from the mountains. It’s situated on limestone that twists and turns to give umpteen different exposures, at altitudes of 150m-250m. And it is here that he makes his very particular wines.
You could call this natural wine, you could call it orange wine – it ticks both those boxes. The grapes are crushed and fermented with the skins for two to four months, just like a red wine, in open wooden vats. That’s where the tawny colour comes from: not so much orange as the colour of aged fino Sherry.
The texture is so light it’s almost ethereal and the nose is – what? Wet clay? Ripening barley? A touch of apples? The acidity is high, ripe and fine. And it doesn’t taste of fruit, it tastes of wine. It’s a sort of apotheosis of wine, both intellectual and sensual. It’s refined, seamless, lively, intense but delicate, structured, yet supple as silk.
There’s a touch of cooked apple, a touch of Victoria plum straight from the tree and absolute purity, restraint and dancing tension, with some tannin of the most fine-grained sort stitched through it.
Hatzidakis, Assyrtiko Santorini, Greece
Grape Assyrtiko
Drink with It’s a brilliant match for pungent flavours like anchovies and olives, and will match with both meat and fish
When to drink It needs 2 years in bottle to open properly, and will be good for 5 or more
Decant? No
Chill? Yes
Why you should look out for it Sparkiness from volcanic soils
What to say to the winemaker ‘Fashion has come round to Assyrtiko’
What not to say ‘I prefer Riesling’
It’s extraordinary that somewhere so hot can produce wine with such singing, stinging minerality and acidity, but that’s Assyrtiko for you. It’s one of the world’s great white grapes, yet until we all started to realise how amazing Greece’s indigenous varieties are, you could hardly find a bottle of it anywhere.
Santorini is of course a volcano, and volcanic soils seem to give wines with a particular energy, a particular sparkiness. The vines here are extraordinary too: there’s a local training system called koulara that winds the canes in a basket, with the clusters on the inside. Every 50 years or so everything is cut back to the roots, and the vine starts again. This system offers protection to the grapes from the incessant wind, and there’s not much rainfall, so dew and mist have to sustain the vines through the hot summer.
There’s no phylloxera on the island so all the vines are ungrafted, and some are allegedly 500 years old. What is more certain is that many vines are over 100 years old. Hatzidakis farms its vineyards organically and biodynamically, and the grapes ripen early at the beginning of August.
This wine is the standard Assyrtiko; there is also Assyrtiko de Louros, aged in old oak for greater weight and ageability, and single-vineyard Assyrtiko de Mylos. Both are impressive, but I prefer the standard bottling for its purity, clarity and precision.
The wine is substantial and savoury, with keen acidity, orange peel and floral notes, some saltiness and an unmistakeable tannic edge. It’s energetic, concentrated and vibrant: a structured, sinewy wine from a unique and difficult place.
Bouza, B6 Tannat Canelones, Uruguay
Grape Tannat
Drink with Roast meat, or the local barbecues; punchy vegetables;
flavoursome fish dishes
When to drink Young – Tannat doesn’t really seem to improve beyond about 5 years
Decant? No
Chill? No
Why you should look out for it A fresh glassful of blackberry fruit and spice
What to say to the winemaker ‘Your combination of humidity and moderate temperatures works wonders’
What not to say ‘Please can I drive one of those cars? Please?’
Alternatives The Sin Barrica is cheaper, and (as the name suggests) is not aged in barrique
Uruguay is heaven for people who like old cars – sometimes quite old. Bouza, founded in 2000 in the undulating hills north and northwest of Montevideo, has a remarkable collection of them; a museum, in fact. What with that and a rather good restaurant, the bodega is worth a visit if you happen to be in Uruguay.
If you are, you’ll be struck by the clarity of light – almost sea light, because neither the Atlantic nor the broad Río de la Plata are far away – but also the temperate warmth. It’s not that hot here, and there’s cloud cover and humidity. All these things are perfect if you want to make ripe reds with moderate alcohol – and isn’t that what almost everybody wants these days?
So the late-ripening, tannic Tannat grapes can stay on the vine until they’re properly ripe – which means no greenness, no rusticity. The bottle is slightly unfortunate because its weight and square-shouldered shape leads you to expect something oaky and extracted, and this isn’t; instead it’s a burly but fresh glassful of blackberry fruit and spice, extremely easy to drink and a lesson to anyone who thinks that the answer to Tannat lies in oak and chewiness.
The wine is fermented in steel tanks, and then aged in new French oak barrels for 16 months, and it simply soaks up the oak, leaving no feeling of oakiness. It’s not an incredibly complex wine but it is hugely enjoyable, and it’s a most accomplished wine, sensitively handled, from a young wine country.
It is one of those instances where a grape variety can seem most at home a long way away.
Meyer-Näkel, Walporzheimer Kräuterberg Spätburgunder Ahr, Germany
Grape Pinot Noir
Drink with Pork, game, beef; perhaps in the Hofgarten restaurant, run by Werner Näkel’s brother
When to drink Meike recommends ageing them for 8 to 10 years, then for probably another 10
Decant? Yes
Chill? No
Why you should look out for it Aromatic, spicy, well balanced and pure
What to ask the winemaker ‘Are you glad you gave up teaching?’
What not to say ‘Teachers have good pensions’
Alternatives The entry-level Spätburgunder
The story of the rise and rise of Meyer-Näkel is a classic: Werner Näkel, the scion of a wine-growing family sees no future in a world of low prices and low quality, which was the Ahr in the 1970s. So he leaves, only to be brought back to the winery when his father becomes ill. And he never leaves again. Instead he modernises, improves quality, buys vineyards, improves quality some more…
German Spätburgunder now has a brand-new reputation for quality and interest, and Meyer-Näkel is one of its leaders. And Werner’s daughters, Meike and Dörte, are not going anywhere. The Ahr used to make pale, wishy-washy Pinot of no great appeal, but Werner went to Burgundy and bought barrels, reduced yields and set about making Pinot that tasted like Pinot.
Climate change favours the Ahr. These are wines of elegance and finesse, ripe and racy: Werner wants aroma and concentration, but not obvious power, and certainly not obvious oak. The wines are aged in barrels, but the oak is perfectly integrated – it doesn’t show, except in the form of a little extra structure.
My favourite is the Kräuterberg vineyard in the village of Walporzheim, a Grosses Gewächs site where terraces are patched onto a steep, rocky hillside and soak up the sun. The wines are intensely aromatic, tight, spicy and mineral, full of black fruits, incense, thyme and wild herbs, very balanced, very pure. The Romans cultivated this hillside; everything is simply reinvention.
Wieninger, Gemischter Satz Wien (Vienna), Austria
Grapes Weissburgunder, Grauburgunder, Chardonnay, Neuburger, Welschriesling, Grüner Veltliner, Sylvaner, Zierfandler, Rotgipfler, Traminer, Riesling
Drink with A plate of local cured meats
When to drink Young
Decant? No
Chill? Yes
Why you should look out for it Fashionable, exotic and different every year
What to ask the winemaker ‘How random is your choice of grape varieties?’
What not to say ‘Why don’t you want it to be the same every year?’
Gemischter Satz is the speciality of Vienna’s own vineyards, grown in various villages within the city boundaries. The vineyards are planted with several different grape varieties all mixed up. It used to be simply the house wine of every grower’s heurige, where locals would go to eat simple home-produced food with a half-litre of wine. Several varieties were grown as a form of frost and disease insurance, and the particular mix became each grower’s hallmark.
Grapes that are picked and fermented together – some ripe, some overripe, some a bit green – produce a result that is totally different from the standard practice of growing, picking and fermenting varieties separately before blending. The wine is more complex, less grape-driven, more ‘winey’. Whether it expresses the terroir better, as the growers claim, is a moot point, but there’s no doubt that co-fermentation has interesting effects on flavour. Fritz Wieninger’s grapes are in the Bisamberg, Nussberg and Rosengart vineyards. All are cultivated biodynamically. The soils are all different, and the wines are different every year. The flavours are always exotic – lime blossom, citrus peel and herbs, held together with good acidity and a silky texture.
Weininger was the driving force behind the revival of Gemischter Satz: 20 years ago it was dying. Now it’s ultra-fashionable and even has its own organisation, Wien Wein, with half a dozen young members committed to Gemischter Satz. Weininger has his own heurige in Stammersdorf: taste it there, in view of the vineyards, for the full experience.
Domaine André & Mireille Tissot,La Vasée Vin Jaune, Arbois Jura, France
Grape Savagnin
Drink with Poulet au vin jaune
When to drink From about 10 years old to 30 or more
Decant? It needs to breathe, so either decant or open in advance
Chill? The producer recommends serving it at 14°C
Why you should look out for it Wet-earth-after-rain note allied to steely acidity
What to ask the winemaker ‘How much extra work is it to be biodynamic?’
What not to say ‘Why are you always experimenting?’
There are just 2ha of the La Vasée vineyard at Domaine Tissot, so there’s not a lot of this wine about.
Vin jaune is a Jura speciality, and it’s rare because it involves putting young wine from the high-acid Savagnin grape into barrel, leaving it for six years while it grows a thin veil of flor, in the manner of fino Sherry, and then bottling it. The barrels aren’t topped up, so what’s left in a 228-litre barrel divides neatly into 228 x 62cl bottles called clavelins.
The key differences between this and fino are that there is no solera system here, and the Savagnin grape has enormous acidity compared to the low acidity of Palomino. So while the flor affects the flavour, the results aren’t the same. You get a similar wet-earth-after-rain note, similar nuts, hay and apples, but allied to steely acidity.
Stéphane Tissot’s wine is remarkable stuff: aromatic, linear, austere, pungent, and in flavour part-way to malt whisky – Tissot, a great innovator, has even experimented with ageing vin jaune in an ex-whisky cask from Isle of Jura. It has iodine, salt, pickled lemon and cheese notes, with a savoury and stony character. It’s also quite restrained: you need to spend time with it to get to know it, perhaps over a meal. It’s a natural with the local Comté cheese, and if you were feeling flush you could use it in the classic dish of chicken with vin jaune and morels, with more vin jaune in your glass.
King Family Vineyards, Roseland, Monticello Virginia, US
Grapes Chardonnay, Viognier, Petit Manseng
Drink with Scallops or trout
When to drink From 2-7 years old
Decant? No
Chill? Yes
Why you should look out for it Perfectly integrated flavours of herbs, hay and summer meadows
What to ask the winemaker ‘How about planting the polo field?’
What not to say ‘Why is that horse eating the vines?’
David and Ellen King had been looking for 5ha of flat land for a polo field when they bought Roseland in 1996. Vines weren’t even a thought, but in 1999 the first ones went in.
You might see a paradox here: a polo field needs flat land, and vines usually prefer slopes. But, says winemaker Matthieu Finot, polo fields also need good drainage, and that’s where the terroir wins. It’s also high up on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in an area that in the time of Thomas Jefferson used to be called Mountain Plains. Finot is from the northern Rhône, but even so, he doesn’t miss steeper slopes.
Now there are 12.5ha of the varieties that seem to suit Virginia so well: Petit Manseng, Viognier, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, plus Merlot and Chardonnay.
This blend of about half Chardonnay, the rest Viognier and Petit Manseng, evolved because it works. Chardonnay brings weight and some apple and pear notes, Viognier brings its honeysuckle and apricots, and Petit Manseng, as well as pineapple and citrus notes, brings acidity, and plenty of it. Even at high sugar levels (and it was originally planted here for dessert wine) Petit Manseng has a very low pH.
It’s a beautiful blend, with perfectly integrated flavours of herbs, grass, hay and summer meadows, very long and complex. There’s no new oak; just steel, old oak and acacia barrels. A grown-up wine with about 13% alcohol; fresh and balanced.
Vittorio Graziano, Fontana dei Boschi Lambrusco Emilia Romagna, Italy
Grape Lambrusco Grasparosso
Drink with Local salami and cheese
When to drink Young, or age it for up to 7 years to become sleeker and less grippy
Decant? No
Chill? Yes
Why you should look out for it Real artisan wine that ages beautifully
What to ask the winemaker ‘Tell me about the Lambrusco Grasparosso grape’
What not to say ‘I like wine to be predictable’
This is what Lambrusco should be like, and once upon a time was. These days, nearly all Lambrusco is industrial.
Vittorio Graziano prefers to go in the other direction: instead of massive yields from irrigated, battery-chicken vineyards, he has much lower yields (one bottle per vine) from unirrigated vines on the hills.
Instead of high-volume, low-cost fermentation techniques he uses what he terms the ‘metodo ancestrale’, which involves wild yeasts, fermenting the juice on the skins for three or four days to get colour, bottling in the spring with a bit of sugar and yeast, and leaving it in bottle to continue its fermentation to dryness.
Eighteen months’ or two years’ ageing on the lees gives more complexity. Some is then disgorged off the lees, which means the wine pours clear. Some is not, and is sold sur lie, and therefore is potentially cloudy. It tastes totally different like this: less fruit, more weight. You can have two wines in one bottle.
This is real artisan wine: wild and unpredictable, with flavours of savoury blackberries and herbs, high acidity, a touch of green, and a bit of tannic grip. Unlike industrial Lambrusco, it ages beautifully. Of course it does: it’s authentic wine, made as Lambrusco used to be made before the lure of mass production and cost-cutting.
For a while Graziano was the only one making artisan Lambrusco, and now a few others have joined in. It’ll be a cult one of these days.
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Margaret Rand is a past editor of Wine Magazine, Wine & Spirit International and Whisky Magazine. She now writes for World of Fine Wine, Drinks Business, Decanter and Imbibe among others, and is general editor of Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book. She has won several Roederer and Lanson awards, and a new edition of Grapes and Wines is due out any minute.